Custom Made Fine Jewelry

Design

Catherine Dining has years of experience designing original custom jewelry for all types of clients.

If you know what you want, she can help you to turn it into a functional piece of jewelry, and if you have no idea what you want, she can help you to decide. If you have your own gemstones, she can design a beautiful piece around them, or she can provide stones to inspire you.

We often start by looking at pictures from our extensive library of jewelry design books, and magazines, and photographs of pieces we have produced in the past, with you sitting beside us, guiding us. Then we draw until we get it just the way you want it. Only when you are completely happy with a design do we begin manufacturing it. Usually this only takes one meeting, about an hour or so. Sometimes it takes more, especially if we are buying new stones for your approval.

We don’t rush you into a decision, and are happy to spend as much time with you as is needed. You can inspect the CAD file, the wax model, and the raw casting along the way, if you want to.

Custom Manufacturing

We do most of our manufacturing in house. Come see our studio! It is right here in plain view, and although we would prefer not to have you hovering over our shoulders as we set expensive gemstones, we are proud of the work that we do, and will gladly give you a tour of the facility , explaining which tools we use, and the steps involved in producing our fine jewelry. Just as it is fascinating to watch dinners being prepared in a restaurant with an open kitchen, so is it intriguing to come see us at work in our open studio.

When appropriate, we use other highly skilled independent local jewelers to do some of the work. No studio is equipped to do everything!

Appraisals

We offer free appraisals on all jewelry items which we produce. There is a small fee for appraising jewelry made elsewhere.

If you insure your jewelry you do need an appraisal. Some insurers may demand that an accredited appraiser conduct the appraisal, in which case we can refer you to one locally. Or maybe you just want one for your personal records. We can also provide diamond certification from the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), the most well respected of all of the gemstone grading laboratories.

Again, this is free if you purchase a stone from us, and provided for a small fee if you bring us a loose gem. Stones under one carat in weight are not usually certified, but we can do an in house appraisal for you on them as well. The weight of stones which are set into jewelry can only be estimated, unless they are removed from their settings.

We can test the quality of your gold, test what type of stone you have, and provide you with both a replacement value and a scrap or trade in value. We include a photograph of your piece on the appraisal, which can be invaluable documentation in the event that the piece is lost or stolen and needs to be reproduced.

Buy Gold

As a service to our customers, we can buy your gold, silver and platinum, if you happen to have have some old jewelry that you don’t want anymore. You can trust us to give you an honest, fair price, generally much more than you would get from one of those places that advertises ‘CASH FOR GOLD’. We do not advertise that we purchase gold, it is a service we provide to our clients.

The price of gold fluctuates, sometimes dramatically. Generally when it is at its most expensive we have a lot of clients who want to sell us their gold, and when it decreases in value fewer people want to take advantage of this service. You can choose to receive a check from us, or apply the amount to the purchase of a new piece.